


And This Too Will Lead To Suffering

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 17:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6620233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Barriss, her relationship with Ahsoka, and how they might meet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This Too Will Lead To Suffering

There is smoke over the Jedi temple.

Barriss can see the smoke from here, the Senate buildings where she waits for Master Luminara to conclude business with several other members of the Council. She thinks they are with Chancellor Palpatine but she is not sure.

There is always smoke over the Jedi temple, from the burials. The halls are always heavy with the spice and herb heavy resin which they used to anoint the wood.

She thinks the smell will always be in her robes. Even now, she notices the faint fragrance as her eyes focus once more on the pale smoke drifting towards paler skies.

She closes her eyes. Her mouth twists. She can barely breathe though the air is clear, over here in the Senate building, where they will determine whether they will continue the war, whether the Jedi will continue to serve as generals on the front lines, where they will decide just how many Jedi will continue to fall.

Her thoughts are interrupted by Ahsoka. She is glad to see her, she thinks. She has a surety about the war, about the fight that Barriss sometimes finds comforting. She is an anchor when Barriss feels as if she is constantly adrift. She can see everything so clearly.

Her Master is not with her, and Barriss wonders if he is in the same meeting with Master Luminara, or if he is elsewhere. He is often here, in the Senate buildings, with his friend Palpatine, and the one or two senators with whom he is friendly.

She would hate them all, she thinks, if that were the Jedi way, and that is what she is, a Jedi. At least, she thinks she is still a Jedi, with her lightsaber hanging heavily at her waist.

This weapon is your life, they told her, and now all it does is take lives.

She thinks she can hear Senator Amidala's voice but it is only a recording, not really her. She is calling for the end of the war. She doesn't want to build more clones or to put more money into the war effort. She wants to bring them home, everybody. The clones, the Jedi.

Maybe even especially the Jedi, some people said.

Barriss thinks, maybe, that she might like Senator Amidala.

She's not the only Jedi who does. Even the Council respects her. Even Master Luminara has said that if someone will end the war, it will be Senator Amidala.

Ahsoka is speaking to her. She is asking how she is. If she will be on Coruscant long. Barriss does not know. She assumes that Master Luminara will advise them of their next assignment when she leaves their meeting.

She has stopped thinking ahead. She has stopped making plans. What's the use? Nothing changes. Everything remains the same.

Her eyes fix on the pale ghost of smoke rising from the Temple. "We should be there."

Ahsoka's hand is warm against her shoulder. "We can go, if you want. I'm sure they won't mind."

Barriss shakes her head as she recites, "They will become one with the Force. That will be enough."

Ahsoka looks at her, frowning, a little, Barriss thinks, but she does not insist. She does, however, keep her hand on Barriss' shoulder, and Barriss lets her, though when they see the long shadows of their masters returning, the hand falls away, and they turn to face them. Ahsoka makes to run towards them, but stops when she sees Master Skywalker and Senator Amidala lingering towards the back, as if they are still discussing something.

Discussing things of great political import, most will say.

Instead, Ahsoka goes to Master Kenobi, and Barriss waits for Master Luminara. "We will leave tomorrow." Her voice is quiet, gentle.

Barriss nods as Master Luminara begins to debrief her. There is a very important capital being besieged. The system would be a great ally for the Republic. Victory would present a very strategic opportunity in the war.

Of course victory there would not end the war. Barriss knows this. Nothing will end the war. The war does not have an end.

She lets her eyes wander towards Master Skywalker and Senator Amidala. They had caught up with the others, but their eyes will meet and they will smile.

Barriss knows this because she has seen it before.

"Does Senator Amidala want us to go too?" Barriss asks.

"Senator Amidala and Senator Organa desire that this be a mercy mission only. Which it will be, in part. Chancellor Palpatine was very desirous we push the Separatists back in order to gain their allegiance. He does not believe that negotiations will be of any assistance in securing the system, but I believe that Senator Amidala will attempt to meet with the Separatists before the attack."

"Did she say as much?" Barriss asks, her voice soft. "Did she say that she would meet to negotiate with them?"

Master Luminara looks at Barriss, as if she wishes she could say she did. "She can't say such things explicitly, Barriss. If she did, things happen."

Barriss remembers the assassination attempts on Senator Amidala's life. Of course. Even the Senate is not safe, she thinks, bitterly.

But they go, as they always do, as they must, as their duty demands. Barriss gazes through the viewport, her hands clasped behind her back. She wants to let her eyes close but they remain fixed on the star-streaked stream of hyperspace.

They land in the middle of the fighting. She has her lightsaber in hand nearly instantly, and she wonders where Senator Amidala is now, and if the peace talks ended prematurely because Senator Amidala failed or because someone decided to have her killed, and this time they succeeded.

She grows colder as the fight continues. It is not a warm planet, and the chill seeps through her robes, the sweat from her exertion clamming to her skin, making it worse.

When it's over--or nearly over since these thing are never really over--Barriss kneels beside a wounded clone.

A blaster has hit him, shattering a spot in his armor that had already taken a hit and did not have the strength to resist another. He does not bleed--the bolt cauterizes the wounds. She closes her eyes to better achieve the meditational state that will let the Force flow through her, that she might heal him, and take away his pain.

She can hardly focus even though it's quiet now. Vaguely, she notices that her hands are trembling as she raises them above his wound for a third time.

She tries very hard.

She tries very hard not to try--to just let the Force flow through her.

In the end, there is only Master Luminara's soft voice in her ear. "Let him go, Barriss." Then the troopers, the ones who still live (for today, at least), drag him away, to put him aside in one of the mass graves.

They say they won. They say that the Separatists are in retreat.

Barriss surveys the bodies around her, the scorch marks scarring the grass, the smoking wood of the trees as embers from munitions still smolder.

"You did well today." Master Luminara shifts to stand beside her. She also surveys the field, and Barriss wonders what she sees.

"Thank you, Master," Barriss says, very softly. "How long will we be staying?"

"Until it's over." Master Luminara drifts towards the leading clone who is striding towards her with purpose, probably to tell her that they had to find another battle to win. "Until the treaty is signed, my padawan."

Barriss trails after her, wondering if Master Luminara knows how much she does not want to remain in this place. She does not want to call it fear, or anger, but--her hand clenches around her saber and she steps over an empty husk of a clone helmet.

Several rotations later, a clone comes forward and says that they have a message for them from Commander Tano.

Barriss looks away from the holo disk he holds in the palm of his armored hand. Commander. She remember when they were padawans, when they were learners and not leaders.

At Master Luminar's nod, the holo disc flickers with the blue ghost of Ahsoka's features. They do not do her justice--the light flickers as if it is always just about to go out. Still, she casts a soft glow in the hand of the trooper.

"We've just received word that Master Unduli and Barriss are to return to Coruscant," Ahsoka says.

She seems to be smiling.

This is what she has wanted so Barriss smiles back--briefly.

Master Kenobi and Master Skywalker join Ahsoka. They begin to discuss the strategy for leaving the system behind. A senator would come to make sure the treaty is signed once the last of the Separatists are routed.

"Master Yoda would like to speak with you once you've landed, Master Unduli," Skywalker says.

If Master Luminara is curious, she does not show it. "Then we will make haste."

They arrive in due time to Coruscant, during the planet's night time hours. The Temple is quiet and peaceful, but the funeral herbs linger in the air. Master Luminara immediately departs for Master Yoda's chambers, leaving Barriss alone.

As is her habit, Barriss goes to the healing wards. Sometimes she visits the people there, even though they are rarely conscious, so badly are they wounded. But she likes to visit, likes to speak with them so they do not feel alone and abandoned.

She makes her way towards one bacta tank in particular, the one that keeps Master Dillaba, Master Windu's former padawan.

She watches through the glass, at the warped figure of Master Dillaba within. There were rumors, rumors that Master Dillaba had come perilously close to falling to the Dark Side, that she had given up her lightsaber, that she believed herself to no longer be a Jedi after the devastation and the war that she been witness to for so long.

Barriss spreads her palm against the glass. Master Dillaba's hair is no longer long and braided. It has been cut short. The ring in her brow has been--removed. There is a scar instead.

Barriss wonders if she did it herself.

Master Dillaba floats in the water, the breathing apparatus keeping her alive as the water flows around her, fluttering her simple Jedi robes, putting a delicate arc to her fingers as her arms stretch weightlessly upwards.

Barriss sighs, heavily, reciting as she turns to leave, "May the Force be with you."

She finds her own way to her chambers quickly. They are as she left them, as she is always leaving them. The narrow, thin bed. The altar with its figurine, one of the only things she has from her people. She unstraps her lightsaber from her belt and bestows it in front of the figure.

She undresses from her robes. Her hair falls long and thick down her shoulders. Curls dip towards her eyes, and she tucks them behind her ears.

Kneeling, she draws a deep, even breath. She reaches through the Force for her lightsaber. It rises with her will and hovers in front of her closed eyes.

She frowns, and the saber begins to deconstruct. The silver shaft separates from the engineering within. Smaller parts, so small that one would think them insignificant but without which the weapon would not function, separate and take up an elliptical orbit around the shaft. Wires unspool and float overhead, where they will not tangle.

There, in the center of it, is the crystal. Words her master had once spoken long ago come back to her, and she whispers them faintly as the lightsaber continues to separate from the parts within itself. "The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force. The Force is the blade of the heart. The crystal. The blade. The Jedi. We are one."

Slowly, her eyes open and she looks upon the pale crystal that had resided in the center of her saber. It does not look as she remembered. Fissures crack its surface when once she had thought it beautiful and perfect and hers.

Perhaps she had picked the wrong crystal, and the crystal was supposed to be hers is out of reach, still waiting for her on Ilum, waiting for her to realize her mistake, to come back for her heart.

The pieces of the lightsaber drop to the floor. They fall softly, with hardly any noise at all as Barriss bows her head, her eyes closed, her fingers curled harshly in the hollows of her knees.

It's all wrong. It's all wrong and she doesn't know how to fix it.

It takes Barriss the better part of the night to reconstruct her saber and when she finishes, it's heavy in her hands, heavier and colder than she remembers.

There's a fine shiver under her skin, and she wonders if its exhaustion or fear or something else.

She activates the blade, watching carefully for anything to indicate the weapon is unstable. But the energy is smooth, and the handle remains cool and cold in her palm.

Rising to her feet, she allows herself to settle into one of the most basic forms, the one used most frequently for meditation instead of defense or offense, and breathes her way through it.

Her hair falls in her eyes, curls cling to her mouth. It hangs damply against the back of her neck. Bringing the shimmering, humming blade close, she burns through her hair, and singed ringlets fall to the floor over her bare feet.

She hardly notices the smell. She hardly notices her doing it at all. When the meditation exercise is finished, she puts on her robes and wanders the Temple grounds. She is no longer a padawan, had received her trial some time ago even though it feels like she is still enduring it.

Master Luminara has not yet taken another apprentice, even though Barriss' absence is something that she must fill. They will take another youngling, Barriss thinks. They will take someone young, like Ahsoka had become a padawan too young, and they will make her fight in the war.

Ahsoka is there too, meditating in a shaft of sun, her two sabers balanced delicately in her hands. Barriss walks towards her, the dew from the grass clinging to her skirts, and sits beside her.

"Good morning," Ahsoka says, with her eyes closed. Without looking, she clips the lightsabers back to her belt.

"Good morning, Padawan Tano," Barriss says, her voice soft.

Ahsoka laughs merrily. "So formal."

"Ahsoka," Barriss amends.

"Do you know why we've been called back?" Ahsoka's eyes are open, and her chin is leaning on her loosely curved fists while her ankles are braced against her knees. She is no longer meditating. She is thinking about the war.

"A new assignment, probably." Barriss shrugs her shoulders. It will be the same story, just on a different system, with different players.

"I hope we don't stay here long," Ahsoka says as she rises to her feet.

Ahsoka was not one to remain still for long, but Barriss remains on the grass looking up at her, shielding her eyes from the bright glare of the morning sun.

"Perhaps you will get your wish," Barriss says, thinking that one day they would have to burn her remains, even though there were rumors that Skywalker could not die until he had fulfilled the prophecy and brought balance back to the Force.

But the same could not be said for Padawan Tano, for Ahsoka.

Ahsoka stands over her, her shadow a long and sliding slant that allows Barriss to drop her hand from her face, to lay it gently in her lap with the other one. "Fight me," Ahsoka says, smiling.

They have never dueled before.

Barriss does not want to fight, but she also does not want to see how disappointment looks on Ahsoka.

She rises, unclips her lightsaber from her belt. Ahsoka follows suit, her green blade activating just moments before the other one. The sun makes them shine brighter.

They bow, and then they begin, easily at first. It's a back and forth, a push and pull, where they acquaint themselves with each other's styles. Barriss can tell that Ahsoka is holding back, that she's playing with her.

Barriss has seen Ahsoka in action, of course, on the holo vids and in person. She is fierce, ferocious, a force to be reckoned with, for one to underestimate at their own peril. She is fast and quick, her feet dancing away and towards her.

But Barriss can hold her own. She is just as skilled even if she takes no joy in it.

The pace escalates until they are truly dueling now instead of dancing round and round each other. Then Ahsoka ducks under her saber, driving a swift blow to Barriss' belly that drives the air from her, leaving her gasping so that Ahsoka can gently push her down into the grass with a soft nudge to her bent knees.

Her saber hovers near her throat, and there is Ahsoka, gilded in Coruscant's sun, smiling down at her. "You are beaten," she says, almost musically as she deactivates the blade and holds out her hand to help Barriss to her feet, an offer which Barriss accepts.

"So I am," Barriss says, brushing the grass from her robes. "You are a skilled fighter."

"Anakin is a good teacher."

Barriss wonders at the lack of formality, at the presumption. She tries it silently to herself. Luminara, she says, and it feels wrong and incomplete and insolent in her mouth.

She wonders again, though she knows she shouldn't. Even Master Luminara had told her that rank and authority meant little to Master Skywalker and his padawan. She can still remember them on Geonosis, as they approached, and they had been arguing heatedly with each other in front of everyone.

She cannot imagine doing such a thing with Master Luminara. When they disagreed, as she found herself doing more and more often, they did so quietly, reasonably, without emotion.

There is the strain of her down turned mouth, the slight widening of Ahsoka's eyes as she notices. Barriss schools her face, turns away.

They are pulled apart as they always are, called by their masters. The day passes in a haze and when it is evening, Barriss welcomes her simple quarters and her simple cot as she lies down without undressing, only unpinning the dotted blue scarf she kept wrapped around her hair and that flowed over her shoulders.

She has forgotten that she cut her hair until that moment when her curls fail to fall free without the cloth to keep them close.

Sleep comes sooner or later, Barriss cannot tell. But she is in the Temple. Its pillars crack, showering her skin in a fine layer of dust. The statues of the standing Jedi have split at their bases. The ceiling of the Temple groans, the sound of shifting stone peeling the skin from her bone as she stands and listens, horrified.

The Temple cannot stand. It will not stand.

She puts her ear to the wall, as if it could tell her what she might do. Master Shaak Ti believed such things. She was the one who told the younglings that the stones speak if you learn to listen, that they whisper their secrets to the initiates who quiet and calm their minds.

But Barriss is anything but quiet or calm as her heart speeds up too fast, as she just narrowly dodges the pebbles that fall like rain.

She only hears the sheering sounds of blaster fire, the march of armored feet, the hissing noise of an activated lightsaber--

Nothing will change, she thinks, as her eyes slowly open. The sounds of battle fade. The walls of her room are sound, and unmarred with falling debris.

She is safe.

At least, she supposes she must be, as she swings her legs over the cot and grips its edge with her hands.

There is nothing but quiet, and a chill in the air.

Later, Barriss cannot tell how many days later, she and Ahsoka sit in the grass. They meditate together, and she wonders if it could be considered habit now. She asks, "Are you happy, Ahsoka?"

The words slip, nearly unbidden, passing through her lips as the distress of the latest day is supposed to be released.

"Of course I'm happy," Ahsoka says. Her eyes are open, as they always are. She is even smiling. "Aren't you?"

Barriss is quiet for a moment. She thinks of Master Luminara. She thinks of Geonosis. She thinks of the dying clone she could not save. She thinks of the worm in her head and the bitter, bitter cold. "Of course."

Ahsoka rises. She tires quickly of meditation, Barriss has noticed. She invites Barriss to join her but Barriss shakes her head. She watches, though, as Ahsoka departs, watches her person grow smaller and smaller in the sun shadowed distance, watches until she is completely gone, and Barriss is completely alone in this part of the Temple.

It is easy to make the plans. It is easy to finally act against the Temple that had grown into such a prison. Into something that is no longer a place of refuge. Against its broken promise. She stares down at her hands. She remembers the trooper she had killed before she had known about the worm. She had plunged the saber straight through him, when she had been his leader, his commander.

She had betrayed him, as the Jedi had betrayed her and the rest of galaxy.

None of them should be here. None of them should be doing what they are doing in this war.

She recognizes the chill on the air, the one that lingers even in the Coruscant summer times. It is the Dark Side, and they have welcomed it into their Temple, and she knows what she must do, what must be done.

Later, when it is finished and she has lost, her old master, Master Luminara, comes to visit her. Barriss rises, reluctantly, but she forces herself to look her in the face. She thinks, distantly and vaguely, that her eyes are sad.

"I have failed you, my padawan," Master Luminara says in that gentle, quiet voice.

Something hurts inside, and Barriss is tempted to turn aside, but she does not. She wants to say that she is no longer her padawan, and has not been for a very long time, but she does not. "You did," she agrees.

"You could have been a great Jedi." There are tears in Master Luminara's eyes. They fall down her cheeks. She does not wipe them away for try to hide them. Barriss wonders why she is here when she should be letting go, as she had told her to let go of the dying clone.

"I am still a Jedi." Master Luminara shakes her head, and Barriss goes close to her until she can feel the humming vibration of the shield sealing her inside the prison cell. "This what the Jedi do now. They wage war and kill in the name of peace. But there is no peace."

The shield seems to thicken between them. Somewhere, out of sight, there is a window where the light falls through, but now the shadows are lengthening and the evening is coming.

"Why?"

"Because we already destroyed ourselves, we--"

Master Luminara holds up her hand and Barriss falls silent, as if nothing has changed, as if nothing ever will.

"Why did you blame Padawan Tano?"

Barriss bows her head. There is the familiar twist at her lips, the hardening of her eyes as she tries not to cry. "Because," she starts to say.

"Because why?"

"Because she was looking towards the next battle," Barriss says. She thinks it sounds even true, like it could be true. Maybe it is true.

"I know," Master Luminara says. "I saw you. I watched you. I saw the same look in your eye as I saw in--" she stops, as if she is about to give away a secret that everyone knows but nobody will share.

"I don't want to talk about that."

So Master Luminara doesn't, and then she leaves, and Barriss is alone for a very long time, until one evening she hears a great cry, and it brings her to her knees. Her hands scrabble at her skull as they once had when the worms had had their say, but this time there is nothing but agony and suffering and grief and she knows that the Temple has truly fallen, that the Jedi are truly gone.

She is alone with a gaping chasm splitting her apart at the place of what she had done and what is being done to the only family she has ever known.

There is a horrible noise screaming through the stone. It's not until, choking and gasping for breath as tears sting her eyes, that she realizes it had been coming from her.

She curls her knees to her chest, and waits for the fate of the Jedi to come to her as well.

She waits for a very long time. They keep her there, whoever they are. Or perhaps they forget about her. There is no more food, and there is no more water.

Barriss knows she should embrace this fact, the imminent nature of her death. But she does not. Instead, she puts herself into a deep meditation. It won't save her from death, but it will delay the inevitable.

Images, memories of the life she once had, flow through her like the water her burning throat craved.

There is Master Luminara, almost smiling. They are back in the caves. They are surrounded by crystal. They move in sync. They breathe as one. They are at peace.

There is Master Windu and his apprentice, Depa Billaba. The sun shines and glints against her jewelry. They practice, perfectly synchronized. He looks at her with attachment, she sees it, everyone sees it and nobody speaks of it.

There is Master Skywalker, and Ahsoka. They are arguing. They are joking. He nudges her shoulder with affection, and she smiles back, her eyes rolling. There is the same attachment in their eyes.

There is Master Kenobi, seated in the shade. Deceptive in his repose, his eyes closed, or nearly so, as he observes his surroundings, analyzes the beings around him. Master Luminara had once described him as a trickster, a master of mirrors and perception. She is very fond of him and speaks highly of his battle strategies.

There is Master Secura, her lekku falling over her shoulder as she stretches. She never loses her accent. Barriss can still hear her entreaties to the Council that she be sent to Ryloth instead of Master Kenobi.

There is Master Fisto, standing beneath the fountains, letting the water run over his smiling face. There are no oceans on Coruscant.

There is Master Gallia and her cousin. They play a word game together. They take turns, they never interrupt: I am a bee, lost and wandering; I am a flower, yellow and blooming; I am honey sticky and gold; I am a comb thick and made of bone; I am a lock of your hair, braided and kept; I am a relic, made to be held; I am a monument, sacred and abhorred; I am a pilgrim, scared with eyes upward, I am a bird, seed-eater, I am an x-wing, call sign leader--and they would go on and on, sometimes for hours. They had said, once, it was a form of meditation, of becoming one with the Force, the energy that surrounds us, binding us together.

There is Master Shaak Ti, surrounded by clones who wish to greet her, who wish for her to grace them with her words. She values the life of a clone, they say. Her beads sway as she moves, her robes fall in folds to her feet, her lekku are long for she is old and wise.

There are so many for the Temple has not fallen, but a sanctuary in the darkness, a bright light guiding them home, keeping them safe instead of casting them aside to the mercies of war and judgment and pain and suffering.

There are the nightmares. There are always the nightmares. The stench of charred flesh, at odds with the sweet resin. The screaming sound of blaster fire. The explosions that knocked her from her feet and that throw her from her meditation exercises, even years afterward.

There is more. There is the smoke rising from the Temple. There is the lingering scent of the resin, the death smell, the aching smell, the empty places smell. There is the glow of the red sabers. There is the sickening give of Ahsoka's flesh when she struck her. There is the look in her eyes, the thin thread of her voice echoing like something shattered as Master Skywalker had brought her before them all.

There are the nightmares.

The memories flow through her until there are no more memories, until there is the hazy gray moment of the in between, the liminal space where anything might happen, where a choice might be made or unmade.

Something wet dribbles into Barriss's mouth, spilling over her chin and sliding down her throat to pool in the hollow spaces of her clavicle. Her eyes drift open.

There is Ahsoka, again. She is not wearing her padawan beads. She still wears two sabers strapped to her waist, but they are fashioned differently than the ones she'd had when Barriss had known her. When they had still been friends. Her eyes are still blue, but now they are sad. Her mouth heavier, and perhaps not quite so inclined to smile.

She holds a canteen of water, similar to what the clones had once been outfitted with. She is holding it to Barriss's mouth.

"You survived," Barriss says, finally. The words come out cracked and broken.

"I suppose I did." Ahsoka is staring down at her, but she is not looking at her.

"I wondered, when they killed the Jedi--"

"I am not a Jedi--not anymore." Ahsoka says the words with a thin sliver of accusation.

Barriss accepts that. It is her fault, technically. She raises her thin hand to wipe the spilled water from her mouth with her frail wrist. "Do you ever wish you had killed me when I asked you to, when you had had the chance, when it wouldn't even have been murder?"

Ahsoka says nothing. Barriss waits in the silence. The surreality of their meeting begins to fade as Barriss feels life once more entering her sleeping limbs. It prickles, it hurts. For the first time she notices she is no longer on on the ground, but that she is lying against Ahsoka, that her back is against Ahsoka's chest, that her head rests against Ahsoka's shoulder.

She shivers, struck with a chill that brings her back to the ship, when Ahsoka had frozen them, when she struck the worm in two. She remembers listening to Master Fisto's report, how he had seen Ahsoka holding Barriss as they slowly died in the cold.

Ahsoka screws the lid onto the canteen and she puts it away, somewhere. "Luminara is captured. She didn't die with Order 66. I thought you might like to know that."

Barriss feels she should have known this, but the Force had forsaken her long ago. She is not surprised she did not know, just as she is not surprised that she had not felt Ahsoka until she had poured water into the desert her body had become.

"Are you so sure you want me to kill you now?" There is a hint of slyness in Ahsoka's voice.

Barriss remains silent, unsure. Ahsoka is very warm behind her, as if she is very far away from everything that had happened before this moment.

Ahsoka nudges her in the small of her back. "Get up," she says.

Barriss moves as if she hasn't moved for a long time--clumsily and with pain. Everything hurts. Her heads throbs as a headache screws its way through her skull. She leans against the wall to make it through a wave of dizziness.

Ahsoka rises with her, brushing off the prison dirt from her legs. "I am not going to kill you," Ahsoka says. She looks back over her shoulder, and Barriss follows her gaze. The panel that powered the shields of her cell is smoking, scored with lightsaber burns.

"I don't understand why you're here." Barriss wishes she has more to drink. She wishes she has more to eat. She wonders if Ahsoka has one of the tasteless ration bars they used to carry during the war. Even one of those would be welcome. She wants to ask, but she also can't.

Ahsoka stares at Barriss as if she cannot believe that Barriss cannot understand, when once they had understood so much of each other.

Perhaps they never had.

Barriss wants to explain. I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm thirsty. I'm sorry.

"Because you're one of the only ones who are left," Ahsoka says. Something makes a noise and she moves, crouching into a defensive position. She activates her sabers and they glow a gleaming white that nearly blinds Barriss after so much time in the darkness of her dungeon. "We don't have time to talk about this. They'll know I'm here, soon enough. Are you going to come with me or not?"

"I'll come with you," Barriss says.

Ahsoka's eyes widen, as if she hadn't expected Barriss to agree so easily.

"Then let's hurry. I don't know how long it will take them to discover the guards are missing."

Barriss wonders what she did to the guards. If they are knocked out or if they are dead. She decides not to ask.

They are hurrying together under cover of darkness when Ahsoka's whispers, "This doesn't mean that I forgive you--because I don't."

Barriss nods. That, at least, is something she can understand.

Besides, she does not want forgiveness anyway.


End file.
